Every doctrine has to start somewhere. Even this one.Want to boost your repeat business, get tons of free referrals, acquire bunches of new customers and get lots of positive buzz for free? There’s a pretty simple way to do it that doesn’t have to cost you a whole lot. Can you guess what ...

The problem with assumptions is that they always come with blind spots.The friendlier and human a company is, the more potential for success it will have. This goes back to the theory that the company with the least amount of assholes wins. I think it goes without saying that unfrie ...

What if 2014 were your last year, your last chance at leaving your mark or doing something great or crossing out every item on your bucket list?This has nothing to do with the Mayan calendar or the financial crisis, mind you. It’s just a simple what if question.What if you went another year with ...

Three completely unrelated things came together this past week that individually weren’t all that fascinating but together formed a something I think needs to be given form to.1. Fear. I was a guest panelist at Greenville’s Switching: Leaving Freelance for the Corporate ladder and ...

Part 2: Fear, career potholes and the weight of social shame.“I’m afraid to tell people that I am closing my business because I’m afraid of what they’ll think,” was one admission from a panelist.“My identity was so tied to my job/title that now that I am on my own, I’m not sure ...

LTV infographic by Kiss Metrics“People pay you. Not pageviews.” That pretty much says it all. (image source.)This is as badass as it is self-explanatory. For those of you who don’t know how to estimate customer lifetime value (LTV, or CLTV), this infographic should be a pretty handy little too ...

Filed under: opinionOriginally posted on The BrandBuilder Blog April 17, 2012.Not long ago, I wrote about what Moneyball‘s Peter Brand called the “epidemic failure to understand what is going on” plaguing the business, marketing and advertising worlds – when it comes to understanding that ...

I'm a cyclist. From the moment I clipped into my first pair of Look pedals and started racing, I was hooked. I have no idea how many miles I've logged over the years (and I don't care to do the math) but I ride a lot. It's very likely that I will write extensively about cycling on this blog, but for ...

First entry in the Inside Left Pocket category. If you've been curious about what that section is going to be about, join the club. Think of it as a miscellaneous category for someone who doesn't like miscellaneous blog categories. Expect a range of non-business and non-writing related topics and a ...

I finally watched Moneyball over the weekend. I’m not a big baseball fan but it held my interest, partly because it was based on a true story and partly because the movie really wasn’t about baseball at all. It was about old thinking vs. new thinking, about industry politics vs. the heresy of ...